Music. Country scene.

Tim Mcgraw And Faith Hill Are Part Of George Strait's Mega-tour

May 08, 1998|By Jack Hurst, Tribune Country Music Writer.

With country music's popularity having slowly but significantly ebbed from its early '90s high tide, George Strait and Tim McGraw have reacted by trying to get everybody in the industry to tour together in one show.

Okay, maybe not exactly. But patrons shelling out the $47.50, $35 or $25 per ticket to attend Sunday's so-called George Strait Chevy Truck Country Music Festival at Soldier Field will have a chance to be entertained for nearly 12 hours by seven main stage acts plus other, developing stars in Straitland, a carnival-like area outside the main arena.

The center stage names include western jazz band Asleep At The Wheel and six of today's most-played radio notables, including teen phenomenon Lila McCann, rising traditional-oriented favorite Lee Ann Womack, established hitmaker (and Mrs. McGraw) Faith Hill, along with three of the field's most prominent hat acts -- John Michael Montgomery, McGraw and the very archetype of the breed, Strait himself.

"It's kind of like a big rock tour," says McGraw, maybe the most under-heralded of Nashville's current major headliners. "It's like one of those (big) festivals they have once a year somewhere, but this one travels around."

The undertaking is so imposing that it employs two stages that leapfrog across the nation, one being set up down the road for the next day's show while Strait, McGraw et al. are busy performing on the other one.

Having won four awards with Hill at the Academy of Country Music Awards a couple of weeks ago (where Strait picked up two and Womack one), McGraw recalls that he had a part in this show virtually from the beginning, when Strait began forging the concept in 1997.

He signed on for prototype shows in Los Angeles, Dallas and San Antonio last year and says he was interested in participating because, "first, it's George Strait," and, second, it offered him "a great opportunity to be out in front of that many people at once.

"We figured that the package together, with George and me and Faith -- and John Michael and Lee Ann were added later -- was a draw (with which) we could be pretty sure of having 40,000 or 50,000 people a night, and it's been pretty much sold out everywhere. For the first show, in Phoenix, there were 71,000."

On the telephone from California, McGraw's voice is occasionally rivaled by another in the background -- that of year-old Gracie Katherine McGraw, who is screaming, laughing or chortling in the bathtub. Her father says the ablutions have been prompted by blackberries she has been imprecisely eating all morning, coloring herself purple from head to stomach.

McGraw and Hill lately have become a duet act in the vaunted tradition of such previous Nashville teams as George Jones & Tammy Wynette and Loretta Lynn & Conway Twitty, thanks to their smash single, "It's Your Love."

Asked if he and Hill entertained any concerns that in becoming so known for duet appeal they could risk reducing their two careers to just one, he says they will perform together off and on but avoid joint interviews.

"I felt like we had two strong careers going," he adds. "We wanted to kind of let them blossom on their own, and I think (we've) done that. Gosh, Faith's been away for three years (since her last album), and her new album just came out at number two (on the country charts), number seven on the pop charts. So she's back with a vengeance."

A working class native of Start, La., who learned in his teens that he was the son of major-league baseball pitcher Tug McGraw, the younger McGraw is a singer whose voice adapts to various styles so readily that it isn't always immediately recognizable.

The man behind it continually downplays his business acumen with jokes about his laziness and his wild college days, neglecting to mention that he was his high school class' salutatorian.

Asked if he thinks this mega-venture with Strait could extend beyond 1998, he says that so far it appears to be "working so well I can't see why they wouldn't want to do it again. But who knows? We'll just have to wait and see how it finishes out and see what everybody thinks."